Conventionally, there has been known a vapor deposition apparatus including a susceptor on which a target substrate is mounted, a gas supplying part configured to face the susceptor and to supply a plurality of material gases to the target substrate, a plurality of mixing pipes configured to mix a plurality of predetermined material gases among the plurality of material gases and to introduce the mixed gases into the gas supplying part, respectively, and a plurality of gas branch mechanisms configured to cause the plurality of material gases to be separated from one another while adjusting a flow rate of each of the material gases and to supply each of the separated material gases to any one of the plurality of mixing pipes, wherein the gas supplying part sprays a plurality of mixed gases mixed in the plurality of respective mixing pipes to a plurality of regions on the susceptor, respectively, and, in each of the plurality of mixed gases, each of the plurality of predetermined material gases is adjusted in terms of a concentration and a flow rate thereof.
In this vapor deposition apparatus, supply lines are branched off from each of gas supply sources by the gas branch mechanisms and the branched supply lines for gases are connected to the plurality of mixing pipes, respectively, so that a plurality of mixing pipes which supplies an identical mixed gas is provided and each of them sprays the mixed gas to a respective place of the plurality of regions on the susceptor.
In this configuration, however, the same number of mixing pipes, which is configured to supply the identical mixed gas, as the number of the regions on the susceptor is required. Accordingly, there are problems in that the apparatus has a complicated configuration and thus also becomes bulky as the number of the pipes is increased.
In particular, in the aforementioned configuration, there are problems in that, since an increase in the number of the mixing pipes results in a further need for an increase in the number of branch lines from each of gas sources, an increase in the number of the regions on the susceptor to which the mixed gases are supplied causes a remarkable increase in the number of pipes in the vicinity of the gas sources.
Recently, since the kinds of gases used for the substrate processing and the number of the regions on the susceptor tend to be increased from the viewpoint of improvement of in-plane uniformity, an increase in the number of pipes and enlargement of the apparatus becomes problematic.